Down Among the Dead Men

Down Among the Dead Men by Michelle Williams

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Authors: Michelle Williams
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high percentage of people dying by hanging are in contact with the floor when found.’
    I was really surprised by this. ‘How?’
    ‘Death in hanging is almost always due to excitation of the nerves in the neck that slow the heart and may even stop it. Add to that some constriction of blood supply to the brain and
it’s usually enough to cause unconsciousness and death within a few seconds. Once you black out, of course, it doesn’t matter how low down you are.’
    ‘Really? That quick?’
    ‘Less than ten seconds, sometimes.’
    ‘Never!’
    He nodded. ‘Most people don’t appreciate that. It’s likely a lot of hangings are just cries for help but they die a lot more quickly than they thought they would. And that
makes it difficult for the Coroner.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘The Coroner won’t confirm a death as suicide unless he is absolutely certain that that’s what they intended to do. All we do down here is find out what caused them to die, but
it’s the Coroner who decides how that came about. If there’s a chance that it was a cry for help and they thought that someone would find them before it was too late, he won’t
call it “suicide”; similarly, if there’s a remote possibility that when they fell off the bridge, they tripped because they were drunk, he won’t call that
“suicide” either.’
    ‘What does he call them?’ I asked.
    ‘He calls those “accidental”.’
    Graham said, ‘I don’t see that it matters what you call it, bloody stupid if you ask me.’
    ‘It does to the relatives,’ pointed out Peter.
    It was Clive who brought us back to Dr Beaumont. ‘Well, I should think that the Coroner’s going to have a problem calling his death “accidental”,’ he said grimly.
‘I wonder what type of Land Rover it was.’
    Early afternoon and, with PMs over and the dissection room cleaned down, we thought we could relax for a few moments – but, as is often the way in the mortuary, this was
not to be. Three firms of undertakers arrived at once, all collecting patients, two of them collecting two each. One of the undertakers was Vince, a large man with a cheery smile who always stays
for a cup of tea and a chat. Quite often, he brings in pieces of steak for us which, the first time it happened, gave me the creeps as thoughts of the League of Gentlemen and ‘special
meat’ came to mind. It turned out, though, that Vince’s family also owned a butcher’s shop.
    Anyway, for twenty minutes, it was absolute chaos, with Graham and me running around while Vince and Clive reminisced in the office. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, no sooner had Vince
left than the doorbell rang once again and in came a group of three trainee nurses; Clive had completely forgotten that he had promised to give them a short talk about the work of the mortuary. I
think he thought about telling them to go forth but politeness got the better of him, although I expect they could see it on his face. He took me to one side and said urgently, ‘Look,
Michelle. Can you take care of these girls? Normally I would, but I’ve got to go and see Ed in his office. He just rang.’
    ‘What do I say to them?’
    ‘Just tell them what we do. That’s why they’re here.’
    ‘What about Graham?’
    ‘I’ve just sent him off to the wards to collect cremation forms.’
    I didn’t feel that I was totally qualified for this task but took a deep breath and went out to the nurses. I led them into the dissection room – now clean and tidy – so that
we were out of the hurly-burly. ‘This is not only a hospital mortuary but also a public one, so we receive bodies from the community as well. They come here if there is a possibility that
they might need a Coroner’s post-mortem.’
    A young girl with tinted hair, too much make-up and a double chin asked, ‘Does everyone get a post-mortem examination?’
    I was giving a speech I’d heard Clive give a few times before; when he did it, it came out fluently, but I

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